s him more) can effectually aid his brother Peter, who was a party
to the unfortunate steamboat-scheme.

After this comes a merry whirl through Europe. The Rhine, Heidelberg,
Munich, Vienna, we visit again in his sparkling letters, dated forty odd
years ago. His reputation, and the good offices of French and English
friends, open an easy path for him; everywhere he finds hospitality and
acquaintances, and everywhere, by that frank, genial manner of his, he
transmutes even chance acquaintances into confidential friends. The
winter of 1822-3 is passed in the delightful city of Dresden. He meets
with a warm welcome at the little Saxon court; he has the _entree_ of a
pleasant English household, where he becomes fairly domesticated. Mrs.
Foster, its accomplished mistress, is a lady of fortune, who has two
"lovely daughters." Mr. Irving, in concert with two or three
gentlemen-friends, organizes certain home-theatricals, in which the
Misses Foster engage with ready zeal and a charming grace. There are
Italian readings, and country-excursions, to all of which Mr. Irving is
a delighted party. He hardly knows how to tear himself away from scenes
so enchanting. To Miss Foster he writes, on the occasion of a little
foray into Bohemia,--"I am almost wishing myself back already. I ought
to be off like your bird, but I feel I shall not be able to keep clear
of the cage." Mrs. Foster, with a womanly curiosity, is eager to know
how a man so susceptible as Mr. Irving, and so domestically inclined,
should have reached the mature age of forty as a bachelor. Mr. Irving
amiably gratifies her curiosity by detailing to her the story of his
early and unfortunate attachment, in the shape of the memorandum to
which we have already alluded. He closes this confidential disclosure by
saying,--"You wonder why I am not married. I have shown you why I was
not long since.... My time has now gone by; and I have growing claims
upon my thoughts, and upon my means, slender and precarious as they are.
I feel as if I had already a family to think and provide for."

We have dwelt upon this little episode, not because it has any essential
importance in itself, but because it has been the subject of a most
unseemly interpolation in the British reprint of the biography. Mr.
Bentley, "Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty," was, it appears, the
purchaser, at a small sum, of the advance-sheets of the book; but, in
order to secure English copyright, he conceived the